The kind with shirtless bastards on the covers and pages so worn they fall open to the good parts.
My chest tightens. Not judgment. Something dangerously close to charmed.
I should announce myself. Clear my throat or close the door or walk away to preserve her dignity.
Instead I cross the room in silence.
I’m standing over her before she looks up.
She startles so hard she drops the book. Her stare goes wide, then mortified. The flush on her neck spreads to her cheeks.
“Dante. I didn’t hear you.”
“I noticed.” I hold out my hand. “Give it to me.”
“It’s nothing.” She tries to tuck the book behind her back. “Just a distraction while I waited.”
“Cassia.” One word. Her name. A command.
She hesitates. Then she surrenders the paperback.
The cover is what I expected. A shirtless man with improbable muscles, a woman arched against him, the title in swooping gold script.Claimed by the Duke.
The spine is so cracked it falls open to certain pages on its own. Well-loved pages. Pages she’s read over and over.
I flip to where her thumb was holding the spot.
His hands pinned her wrists above her head as he drove into her, and she cried out his name like a prayer, like a curse, like the only word she knew.
“Don’t.” Her voice is strangled. “Please.”
I look at her. The embarrassment burning in her cheeks. How she can’t meet my focus. My proper wife, my brilliant forensic accountant, reads bodice rippers in secret like contraband.
Heat blooms in my chest.
I sit on the couch beside her. Close enough that our thighs touch.
“Read it to me.”
Her head snaps up. “What?”
“The scene you were on.” I put the book back in her grip. “Read it out loud.”
“No.”
“That wasn’t a request.”
“Dante.” She’s breathless, pleading.
“You were enjoying it.” I reach for her, pull her onto my lap so she’s straddling me, the book trapped between our bodies. “Show me what gets my wife wet when I’m not there to do it myself.”
Her inhale catches. Her thighs clench around my hips.
“Read.”
For a long moment she just stares at me. Then, with unsteady hands, she opens the book to the marked page.
“‘His hands pinned her wrists above her head.’” Her voice is a whisper. She swallows. “‘As he drove into her.’”
